Group Exhibition Entrance Space, Hainan
As the migration routes of migratory birds begin to overlap with the maps of human migration, jars of pickled vegetables from the inland quietly ferment alongside grains of sea salt on a shared balcony. Sichuan mahjong effortlessly adapts to games played beneath coconut palms, while the secret recipes of Jinzhou barbecue find new life over charcoal made from coconut shells. Customs from different regions migrate and coexist in their original forms, yet they do not rush to fuse into a new cultural stratum. Instead, we inhabit a cultural landscape in which distinct traditions remain both independent and mutually accommodating. They gather and disperse, living peacefully without ideological unification, and relying on one another without dissolving into ecological or cultural hybridity.
Home, then, is no longer a fixed anchor. It has become a constellation—like the yangge dance moving to the sound of ocean waves today, only to return days later to the heated apartments of northern China and once again occupy the squares where people gather to dance.
The exhibition seeks to deconstruct the conventional narrative of home. Space is understood not as a static container, but as a dynamic product of social relations, where the private sphere of the family and the public sphere of the city continually confront and merge with one another. Rather than insisting on the purity of culture, we are now more concerned with the portability of symbolic and emotional forms.
When aged Shanxi vinegar is poured into a bowl of Hou'an rice noodles, it becomes both an invocation of one's homeland and an offering to otherness. Contemporary nostalgia preserves its accumulated warmth through movement: it can be light and fleeting, yet also rich and enduring.
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